"Lawrence Watt-Evans - Ethshar 2 - With a Single Spell" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watt-Evans Lawrence)

overhanging branches of the swamp trees, at least this would be the last
disaster. He had nothing more to lose.
Times had been bad at first after the ship went down, after his cousins
threw him out, very bad indeed; he had slept in a few doorways and cornfields
and gone without several meals. Old friends had quietly ignored him. He had
thought it a great stroke of luck when, just sort of resigning himself to a
lifetime career of theft or beggary, he had convinced old Roggit to take him
on as an apprentice, despite his age.
Tobas was not quite so certain, as he watched the cottage burn and in its
burning destroy his second inheritance, that the apprenticeship had been good
luck, after all. He was homeless again, older and with fewer prospects than
before.
A particularly bright flame rose up for a moment with an intense
crackling, followed by a muffled explosion; Tobas caught an odd smell, one he
could not place. The flames must have reached more of old Roggit's combustible
supplies, the special sealed boxes he had carefully kept well away from the
more ordinary wizardly necessities, such as powdered spider and tannis root.
Tobas frowned slightly. Trivial as such a detail might be in the face of
catastrophe, he was irked to realize that now he would never know what all
those things had been for.
He heard shouts and rattlings and turned to see the fire brigade from the
village finally arriving, far too late to do any good, at least half an hour
after he had sent his nearest neighbor calling for help. He recognized most of
them: old Clurim, who, with his two wives, was the subject of most of the
bawdy jokes told in Telven; Faran, the village's only blacksmith and expert on
fires of all sorts; and Vengar and Zarek, who had been his companions as
children but had avoided him since his father's death. Tobas sighed; they had
come too late to do much good. He had long since given up any hope of saving
anything beyond the foundation and perhaps the outer walls, and even as he
watched the brigade arriving, he could see that the walls were going.
After he had come shouting out the door, had gathered his wits somewhat,
and had found that helpful neighbor and sent him puffing off over the hill
toward the village, he had struggled briefly with the thoughts of a heroic
dash into the inferno. His common sense had quickly prevailed over his daring,
however. After all, he told himself, what would he have saved? The Book of
Spells would have been almost the first thing to go, since it had been
directly beneath where the fire had started, and the only other items whose
value he really knew were the athame that hung on his belt and the vial of
brimstone in his pouch. Roggit's semiprecious stones would perhaps have been
worth retrieving had Tobas known where they were, but the old man had hidden
them well.
It occurred to him now, far too late, that a change of clothing and a
pair of boots might have been a good idea. The water pail, too, might have
been of service in fighting the blaze.
Tobas had to admit that, once they had arrived, the people of Telven had
set to willingly enough, filling their buckets from the swamp and flinging the
water onto the flames, where it hissed and sizzled with little visible effect.
Those who had no buckets, like himself, stood by and watched, admiring the
pretty colors that erupted here and there as the old wizard's arcane powders,
one by one, fell from their heat-shattered jars and burned away, filling the